


ten reasons to break up with me: a love letter

by kitcassiachan



Series: seen: a haikyuu collection [15]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst and Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Established Relationship, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, POV Hinata Shouyou, Post-Olympics, Post-Time Skip, Relationship Study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:09:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26655670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitcassiachan/pseuds/kitcassiachan
Summary: 1. It has to be you,‘cause I won’t.
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou/Miya Atsumu
Series: seen: a haikyuu collection [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1711519
Comments: 51
Kudos: 314
Collections: AtsuHina Exchange





	ten reasons to break up with me: a love letter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [maqaronne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/maqaronne/gifts).



> I know you asked for a long distance relationship fic where Atsumu struggles with missing Hinata but while writing it, I got drawn to Hinata’s side of the story so I decided to tell it from his POV instead! I hope it’s still good and still gives you a nice dose of angst.

**ten reasons to break up with me:  
** _a love letter_

**1\. It has to be you, ~~‘cause I won’t.~~**

**2\. I know ~~how to manipulate~~ you.**

Atsumu does this weird thing with his tongue. It’s the first thing Hinata notices about him. He’s talented, he’s handsome and he can’t keep his damn tongue inside of his damn mouth.

Like every other flaw—the rash anger when he serves, the pouty ways he controls his environment—it becomes an endearing facet of his personality within minutes of knowing him. It’d be cliche to say he has no flaws when he has so many and Hinata loves each and every one of them. 

“Probably ‘cause I sucked my thumb as a kid,” he tells Hinata once when Hinata catches him and brushes his thumb against his tongue, watches Atsumu wrap his lips around his finger, go pliant in his lap. “I’m a good sucker,” Atsumu smiles up at him. “You’d know, wouldn’t ya?”

It pains him deep down. He has a hard time watching himself on tv no matter how well he plays because it’s obvious that whenever he’s nervous, he sucks on his cheek and whenever he’s giddy, he rolls his tongue.He’s easy to read, obvious with his tells, and Hinata understands him well enough to know that though Atsumu deserves to come to terms with it slowly, if he’s told about Brazil, he’ll sully their last months together. It’ll be front and centre in his mind.

Kageyama says it’s selfish but he’s wrong—it’s more than selfish, selfish in more ways than one. Hinata wants to have his dream and Atsumu too—he wants their final moments to be of Atsumu smiling, their final games the best feeling in the world, dominating victories followed by passionate nights where they giggle and taunt each other sleepy, wake up to cook, and dance, and kiss with mouths that taste Nutella-sweet, only to chase each other back in bed. He wants that until he can no longer have it. 

Hinata wants. Atsumu takes.

“What would it change?” Hinata defends. “He’s gonna be upset when I leave anyway. I’d rather him be happy for now.”

Kageyama knows him. “For now. You want his lows to be somebody else’s problem but you’re his person and they should be yours.”

**3. ~~Please, don’t~~ leave me.**

Atsumu might break up with him. Hinata accounts for this only in so far as to realize that he himself would never. Brazil or not, he can’t be made to choose. He wants and needs both.

But choosing Brazil is choosing because there is a very real, very painful possibility that Atsumu might prefer something physical, someone who doesn’t equate happiness to settling, stagnating. Hinata’s restless, has been for a while, playing house, the same level of volleyball when he has gone up against the world. He needs the break to grow—but Atsumu might see it for what it is: cowardice disguised as concern. And he might leave. (And he should.) (But he won’t.) 

Three days before the flight, they’re cuddled in bliss. Atsumu tucked, sated and sleepy, against his chest, right above his heart, breathing in time with his heartbeats. He notices. He asks what’s wrong? Hinata looks at him, despite himself, with pity. He kisses his mouth and talks him through it. He cups his face and brings him close, wipes tears that never happen because Atsumu stays strong, and Hinata loves him, loves him so fucking much. 

“Trust me when I say I’m exactly like you about the things I want and I want you, that will never change. Me and you are it.”

“It all the way from Brazil,” is the only thing Atsumu says, silent through the rest. Logistics, excuses, talk of numbers and the deal—a two year contract with a six figure paycheck. Asas São Paulo. He’d be starting—Brazil’s number one in the rankings! And he misses the sun, the food; he has been meaning to return. He can’t say no. He doesn’t—well, _didn’t_. But it changes nothing!

“It from anywhere in the world. It doesn’t matter where I am. I’m yours.” He feels like he’s begging. It’s Atsumu’s loss to mourn and Hinata can’t even let him grieve it for fear that he’ll give in when the fight is just starting. 

Atsumu doesn’t look at him, looks at their hands, matching tape, mutual bruises. “You lied—”

“I didn’t lie. I never lied,” Hinata says in one desperate breath. “I made a tough decision, but I never lied.” Hiding isn’t lying. Saying _soon_ , saying _next time, I love you, I’ll marry you, us forever_ those are all absolute truths. 

Atsumu doesn’t fight him. “Okay.”

**4\. I ~~should have~~ trust ~~ed~~ you with my life ~~decisions~~.**

“Statistically speaking, I’m a better hitter than Hinata ever was,” Sakusa says simply. Their last dinner together in Hinata’s favorite place. Everywhere he looks he sees the two of them, eating. 

Atsumu laughs. The first noise to come out of him since they sat down and Hinata ordered for them both. The food comes and he’s half-hearted about it, about everything, volleyball, sex. Hinata wants to steal him away and make this last night about them—how they’re going to get through this together—but he owes it to the team to say goodbye properly.

Buffers, Kageyama would have called it, between “ _you”_ and ” _him”_ and ” _the talk you have to have_.” At no point between the bad night and the following days of panicked packing has Atsumu brought up if this is okay, if this is cause for break-up. Not like this, not now, break up with me over text, Hinata thinks really hard. If you do it now, I’ll stop you. I’ll use any means. I’m evil like that and I won’t ever let you lose me. 

“Bokuto too,” Thomas adds. “And he’ll never leave MSBY. So we’re set.”

Bokuto nods feverishly. “Never. Don’t worry, Shouyou-kun, we’ll do well, win a lot! For you!”

“Of course,” Hinata agrees with a tight smile. It’s not what he wants to hear but what Atsumu needs to, to get over it. They’ll go on without him. (But not you, right, baby?) “I’ll be rooting for you,” he says. “I’ll watch every match,” he promises. 

Underneath the table, Atsumu clutches his hand. He leans his weight in Hinata’s side. “We’ll make you proud,” he says, and his voice doesn’t wobble. 

They walk home in knee-deep snow. It’ll be summer in Brazil. Hinata packed nothing but essentials, work out clothes and old t-shirts, a few bathing suits for once in a while at the beach. The rest he’s leaving home, with Atsumu—because _Atsumu is home—_ because _Atsumu will visit_. “Okay,” Atsumu says. 

It’s not a last resort. It’s faith, having enough confidence in your partner. Atsumu will keep his stuff safe. This way, he’ll have a part of Hinata always. He’ll wake up in Hinata’s clothes and sheets they bought together, racing through the store, and memories, his high school jerseys from when they met (and fell promptly). He’ll know Hinata intends to return. (He’ll never move on.)

“Do you hate me?” Hinata asks.

“I could never,” Atsumu says, holding his hand, their fingers interlocked. Imagine if Atsumu didn’t let go. 

He hasn’t cried about it yet. Hinata won’t admit how bad it scares him, how he looks at his boyfriend’s golden eyes in moments he himself wants to shatter, when they watch their favorite shows, wake up for midnight snacks, lather each other soapy under the same shower-head. I’ll miss this, he thinks, won’t you, won’t you miss me? 

“Do you love me?” he asks, voice thick and choked up. If he cries it’s for show; he’s not allowed to be sad because he chose this.

“So much.” Atsumu kisses him. His arms warp around Hinata’s waist, picking him up the extra inches needed for their lips to stay pressed. Imagine if he wanted this forever.

The escalator is full of family members looking back at those they left behind. Hinata looks ahead, doesn’t turn to wave one last goodbye, regrets it immediately the second he’s past the security checkpoint and Atsumu’s out of sight, possibly for good. (Probably.) Frozen, he has the piercing thought that he just lost him for a sport, forever for a sport. This one second will define him.

And he wants to scream. And he wants to walk out. But his passport is stamped. There’s a line behind him, expecting him to keep going.

When he lands, he has cried himself dry. Silent streams running down his face unnoticed in the low lights of the airplane while everyone else is asleep. The loneliness of being nowhere with your phone shut. A spec in the sky. 

Atsumu never cries in front of him. Hinata asks at some point, over text, cause he can’t help himself.

“You weren’t the first person to break my heart,” Atsumu says.

“At some point you get used to people leaving you when something better comes along.”

“I’ve always known I’m temporary.”

“I’m happy you and Samu are following your dreams. :)”

17,360km between them but the pang in Hinata’s chest is just the same as if he had heard it right against his cheek. He knows Atsumu’s crying, but he doesn’t call him because he’s selfish, because he doesn’t want to hear. 

**5\. I ~~made you~~ need ~~me, gave~~ you ~~no choice but~~ to want me.**

Their friends mistakenly think it was Atsumu who pursued him because Atsumu made his fascination public and rumors spread of his announcement. He chose Hinata for himself. When Hinata makes the team, it’s labeled fate.

It’s anything but.

It’s Hinata, who seeks him out, who goes to their games, who wants the Jackals to recruit him—to go pro, naturally, but for Atsumu too, because Atsumu saw in him what no one else had and Atsumu said he’d set to him without Hinata ever having to ask for a toss.

It’s his third year and he’s attractive. Like any ugly duckling who grows up hot and blossoms late, he lets the thrill of it get to his head, loves flirting and being flirted with. What he used to beg for—attention / mercy—now comes so very, very easy. He’s set on using it.

“Remember me? Or you’re too much of a big shot now?” Hinata flirts at the end of one of their Miyagi games when Atsumu walks past the audience and Hinata shamelessly flaunts the fact that he’s wearing his jersey though Atsumu isn’t their starting setter and rarely plays.

But Hinata’s fixated and Atsumu always stops to notice.

Life gets twisty and intertwined. Volleyball and Atsumu. Wanting one for the other. Wanting both inseparably.

“I remember you,” Atsumu tells him. “Your hair’s long, Shouyou-kun. You’ve gotten pretty. Any good yet?”

Standing on the first step of the bleachers, Hinata towers him by a mere inch or two. Atsumu’s gotten hotter. Money does that to people. His hair is shorter, blonder, almost white, his eyes pretty with paparazzi blitz. He’s buff, he’s perfect. He has a confidence about him that’s obnoxious to most. Hinata feeds off it like a fly. And though it would be so very, very easy to take it, he doesn’t have to because Atsumu hands it to him freely.

“I’ll keep my promise if you keep yours,” Atsumu winks. 

Hinata goes abroad. Becomes his own. Tests it. Thinks it. He makes the team and Atsumu’s there. Waiting on him. A starting setter for the MSBY Black Jackals, Hinata’s setter, and Hinata, his spiker, finally. Atsumu keeps his promise.

Hinata too: he beds him before he puts sheets on his own bed.

“Date me,” he says, straddling him the next morning. “Me and you, let’s make it for real.” 

It’s aggressive, as it should be. That’s what got him here. Who’d have given him the ball if he hadn’t fought for it first? Who’d have given him a shot?

**6. ~~I’m jealous when~~ you’re better without me.**

It’s a lot of coming to terms with things.

Like the fact that their relationship is _not_ the same and Hinata can’t make it so.

Like missed calls and bad internet connection. Frozen, pixelated smiles. Tears that can’t be reached for or wiped, being witness to your lover suffering and there being nothing for you to do. Helpless conversations where he watches Atsumu bite his lip to swallow pain. Losses when he’d give up anything to have Atsumu hold him. His hands on Hinata’s arms; he hugs himself to feel the same. Bokuto laughing loudly in the background interrupting their talks, chilling on Atsumu’s bed when Hinata can’t and can’t stop thinking about it. Atsumu falls asleep with the video still on. Hinata watches him breathe and his fingers hurt from squeezing because he can’t, there’s nothing for him to do. How many times has he thought of kissing the screen? How many more kissed Atsumu’s selfies before a match? 

Like Atsumu setting for the Jackals, who survive without him, stay steady in their rankings—who have new recruits, fresh faces for Atsumu to mentor and mold, boys whose hair he ruffles softly and whose kills he claims. Boys who outdo Hinata’s records, who can manage their quick. Atsumu’s boys, the media calls them, because Atsumu throws his all into training a whole generation of cannons. Boys who aren’t him.

Atsumu’s surrounded by love. Hinata too—he’s the darling of his team, but it’s not the same as seeing someone you adore piece you out of their life because for Hinata, everything is different but Atsumu is the same without him. 

It’s coming to terms with being jealous, and then deeply ashamed about it. It leaks through their video chats. He asks questions that have bite, and pretends he never saw their games, despite promising, only to be caught in a lie because when Atsumu plays, he sits before his laptop, transfixed, reacting to every single point. Small, soft, _“Yes, baby!”_ -s whispered under his breath. Rituals—he has to wear his old jersey during and watch with no one around. He holds his breath when Atsumu serves.

Atsumu says he used to feel Osamu mocking him. “I just know, it’s like a thing.” Hinata wonders if he senses all the times Hinata tells him he loves him, how well he’s doing, how cool that toss was. 

What would Atsumu pick given the same deal? Hinata never asks, fears both the answer he might be met with and the one that grows inside him.

**7\. You’re ~~too~~ good for me.**

Atsumu sends him short videos of himself with cute titles:

for when you’re sad,

for when you need a bad joke,

for when you want someone to agree with your rants even though you’re completely in the wrong,

for when you “accidentally” catch me butt naked after a shower,

for when you want to feel me on you, my whispers, my mouth, _that’s it, good boy,_

for when you miss me too much, for when you miss sleeping next to me, for when you want to fall asleep to my voice, wanna hear a funny story?

our first time meeting—as told by me, by Osamu, now Sakusa (this one’s too short!!!), the story we tell others at bars when we wanna fuck with them,

good morning, good night, I love you, I miss you, I need you, you’re with me,

for when you win, for when you lose, for when you want to think about how we used to win together,

for when you need me to set for you, again and again, nice kill, nice serve, _Shouyou-kun! Sho-chan,_

Shouyou, my love,

you got this, I got you, 

for the day you feel closest to giving up,

for a day I’m not speaking to you and you want to remember that I will soon, I love you.

**8. ~~You shouldn’t have to~~ fight for me.**

Atsumu stops sniffling on their calls and Hinata should be happy _but_ —the fact that there’s a but—he’s an awful boyfriend, who keeps saying that so he can be validated, so Atsumu can say, _no, baby, no, you’re good_. That in itself makes him terrible.

Among other things. Among worse.

Among texts that are passive aggressive, calls that end with him screaming. Atsumu starts hanging up, ignoring his texts when it’s clear that he’s riled up. Missing their daily routines because _he’s tired_ or _it’s late_ or _nothing new happened anyway. Tomorrow?_ becomes once a week. Once a week is not enough. 

“I can’t talk to you when you’re mad. I won’t be your punching bag.”

Hinata’s not mad, he’s lonely. He’s afraid, and alone, and wrong, and alone. Volleyball was the only thing that made sense. Now nothing does. He falls asleep crying.

“Whaddya want from me, Sho? You never gave me a chance. You lead, I follow. We’ve no issues so just say what ya wanna say and get it over with already.”

These are banned words: enough, over, I’m over it, it’s done. Mentioning a break up is as good as doing it. “Never tell me that if you don’t mean it,” Hinata had threatened him the first time he’d stuttered, “May—maybe, we sh—should?” It’s not maybe. It’s yes or it’s no. Mean it or fight it. 

“So if I’d told you? You’d have done what about it?” Hinata asks.

“The same. I’d have supported you. Brazil is where you belong.”

“That hurts me so much, you know?”

“It hurts you that I’m unconditionally on your corner? That I’m willing to wait—all my life I’ve fucking waited for you and I’m waiting more and _you_ get to be mad, how’s that making any sense—”

”Please don’t hang up,” he begs.   
  
Atsumu screams at him, ”I’m not!”

“Don’t pretend you’re okay with it if you never were, you could have told me to choose.”

“Yer picking fights,” Atsumu sighs, resigned, and Hinata would rather have anything but that—he’d rather be yelled at than hear Atsumu pulling away. “Nothing I do is right cause it’s in yer head to break up with me and yer gonna go about it one way or another.”

Mean it.

“Maybe I’d have stayed,” Hinata says.

“You’re in fucking Brazil, Hinata. Who cares anymore?”

Fight it.

**9\. I ~~know you deserve someone who~~ ’d pick you every time.**

Perhaps a part of him left to feel bigger. Perhaps he’ll never feel tall. The wall will remain. The peak but the glimpse before the fall.

Oikawa thinks people like them are meant to date late and date others. Sex with volleyball players while fun and readily available, is not worth the cons.

“Someone’s always better,” Oikawa argues.

When they first sleep together, before Atsumu and the Jackals, that person is Oikawa. He’s better, and everything Hinata needs: attention, validation, something familiar in a world of strangers. Most importantly, a rival—a distance to close. He’s lost if he can’t chase. Oikawa giggles and dares him to follow.

When Hinata rejects him the next time they see each other on different sides of the net, Oikawa calls him _tamed_ , and that pisses him off, and they fight about it, and Oikawa calls his boyfriend a bench-warmer, a scrub.

“Miya’s good but he doesn’t have it. He’s not like us. He’ll be happy to play division one for the rest of his career but there’s a world out there for people who can make it. You can. He can’t. Leave him before he ruins you.”

They meet up in Argentina and Oikawa feels vindicated. “Told you nothing’s good enough now that you’ve seen it.” (The view from the summit.)

He offers comfort and anecdotes, words of advice. Oikawa left everything behind to prove others wrong, his home, his friends, Iwa-chan, the person he loved for as long as he knew how to, who’s now married and loves someone else. To him, one glance in four years is worth the emptiness that follows. Hinata’s far too wanting for that to be all there is.

“When does it stop?” Hinata asks.

“If we’re lucky? Never. When you’re retired. When you injure yourself—god forbid. Why, you’re tired already? And here I thought no one matched Chibi-chan’s stamina.”

He’s not tired. He could do this forever, run the hamster wheel ragged. Chase a million people’s dreams and have them all. “Things happen for me,” he says, when people question his certainty. He gets what he wants but if he never stops wanting, if nothing’s ever enough, there will always be more to get. That’s a life defined by lack.

“You can’t run off to a different country every time you feel you’ve peaked and it’s boring to keep winning,” Kageyama argues.

“I’m not running.”

“The first time you weren’t.”

“Isn’t that what you’re doing too? You left first.”

Kageyama will always be the person who understands him to an annoying degree. Hinata’s blueprint for decisions, his mirror for mistakes. Hinata looks to him when he’s unsure but lately he’s been seeing less of himself, more of the gaps between them, and those in his current life.

Kageyama scoffs. “Don’t do it just because I am. I’m not better than you anymore.”

“I know that, you bastard. We’re the same.”

“We’re not the same. Sometimes you forget that. You have nothing to prove.”

**10\. I ~~don’t want to~~ love you ~~any~~ more...**

Atsumu does visit and they spend the whole weekend in bed, hugging and kissing. Hinata remembers what it feels like to have someone hold you; he doesn’t want to let go. He remembers the sound of Atsumu laughing until he snorts and it makes him tear up to have missed so many of those.

They’re a real couple again. In public they hold hands, kiss in pretty spots that aren’t the same without him, share food in restaurants Hinata usually sits in alone, make silly jokes, inside jokes, take selfies with the both of them.

“I’ll wait for as long as you need me to if you tell me there’s an end to waiting,” Atsumu says on their last night together. “Because I can’t survive off three times a year. It’s so hard to keep losing you.”

Goodbyes don’t get easier. You can’t learn to leave. Bracing for pain only makes it worse. Like sitting in the electric chair, knowing how the shock feels and that it’s coming. The night before the execution, sleepless, desperate—it never gets better. 

Atsumu runs into his arms at the airport and Hinata’s already thinking of how they’ll be here a few days later, doing this exact thing but with tears and clingy hands, last kisses, one more, one last one, on the mouth, the chin, kiss my forehead, kiss me deep enough to fill my soul so it doesn’t run out when you’re gone. Atsumu’s body coiled all around his own, begging to be told to stay, both knowing he can’t, he has to keep playing. 

“Like volleyball, you became a thing for me,” Hinata confesses to him late in their second year apart.

Atsumu’s third visit to Brazil. Hinata has flown back seven times, twice under medical leave, sloppy injuries that could have been prevented. He comes back to Brazil, jetlagged and numb, and can’t seem to want to stay. It was never like this the first time around. He had something he was fighting for. Then he got it. Now he’s losing.

Atsumu holds him. “Am I still a thing?”

“You’re everything,” Hinata chuckles.

“But a thing?” Atsumu gets stuck on the wording.

Hinata doesn’t know how to tell him that he doesn’t have another type of love in him, one that’s not pervasive and obsessive, taking over every aspect of his life until it becomes one with what he defines himself. He loves Atsumu like there is no other choice. If Atsumu can bear to have him.

“I don’t want to be a goal,” Atsumu mopes.

“What then?”

“A given,” Atsumu squeezes him. “No matter what your goals are, I’ll be there.”

Hinata hasn’t signed his new contract. It sits above his desk. Japan calls to him. He thinks of Daichi and the rest, how they’re happy with _enough_ , how unhappy he’s with _more_.

“I think I wanted you to tell me to stay. I didn’t tell you because I knew that if I did and you said stay, I’d have stayed.”

“You’d have stayed?” Atsumu asks. Hinata nods. Years he has re-thought this, wanting to stay, wanting _permission_ to stay, wanting to accept that he’s staying for him, and that’s okay, he’s allowed to. “You’d have resented me for holding you back. I’d have resented you for making me the bad guy.”

“I know,” Hinata smiles. “But I think I need that.”

“Me to resent you?!” Atsumu laughs. “There are easier ways to do that, ya know? Just tell me Osamu’s the hotter twin or somethin’.”

Hinata rolls his eyes. “No, ugly twin—” Atsumu pinches him in the belly. “I meant someone to tell me it’s okay now, it’s good, it’s enough.”

**(...than anything.)**

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Figuring the structure of this one was a bit of a puzzle but I hope it was effective! I know it sort of turned into a Hinata character study on ambition and greed but I thought it might be cool to explore the negative side-effects of that mentality.
> 
> I love and appreciate all kudos and comments. I can finally reveal myself!! You can follow me on [twitter](https://mobile.twitter.com/KitCassia) and here’s the [exchange post](https://twitter.com/atshn_exchange/status/1316394581697523713?s=20) if you’d like to share. 
> 
> Lastly, I have written a bunch of atsuhina of all flavors (part 4, 5, 6, 10, 13 of the series are atsuhina).


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